Philippa Bishop from Bishop's Stortford emailed in the photo in and later told us:

"The car had been sitting there for a few days and we hadn't done anything to it – we live in a normal street.

"Going out to defrost the windscreen we found this on our car and find it amazing! Have no idea how or why it occurred, can any of your readers explain to me how this incredible pattern arose?"

We asked Guardian Science if they could help us work how this sort of thing comes about. The desk put us in touch with a couple of snowflake experts - and we soon found the formation looked similar to those on the website Snow Crystals Vol. #16 February 22, 2010. Moreover there was a very similar image here – so we got in touch with Kenneth G. Libbrecht, from Caltech who runs the snow crystals website to see if he knew anymore. He said:

"The picture looks real to me. Frost formations like that are not unheard of."

But do you know anything more about frost formations and can help Philippa with information on how this sort of natural phenomenon occurs? Leave a comment below or share your own pictures of the fabulous fallen frost in our UK snow Flickr group.

While the snow and gales continue to threaten residents in the north of the UK, a new swath of pretty white snow scenes have found their way to Guardian offices – via our snow Flickr group – you can share your snow scenes in the group here.